Window Farms - Really local food
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Britta Riley lived about as far away from a farm as you can get (in a small New York
City apartment) but she had a window with sunshine and some knowledge of hydroponics,
so she and her friends built a window farm out of…plastic water bottles. It is a really
simple idea. A pump at the bottom sends liquid nutrients up to the top so that they can trickle
down through plants’ root systems, which are suspended in clay pellets. The problem
was that it was loud, leaky, and power-hungry. So Britta did something amazing: she asked
the whole world to improve the design…by creating a social media site where people
were free to experiment with window farms and throw in their ideas…and people responded…and
the design evolved! The website involved over 30,000 people from all over the world, and
now you can buy a window farm or build one by visiting here [point to link: www.windowfarms.org]
Window farms are a great idea and a source of REALLY local food, but more important is
the idea that “open source collaboration” on the internet allows us to come together
to build on each other’s work. And now you can download beautiful, well-tested designs
for your own window farm. Call it “R&D…I-Y!”
